Hi Everyone,
These are the myths that our illustration narrates. They might bring clarity, or you might just enjoy reading them. The piece is down now, which is always a touch sad, but we're ready for the rest of our lives now.
Love,
Bribird
Creation Story
In the beginning we were a drop of water, floating in darkness and silence. The sun came when the Fuhrl came, but until then there were only giants and water. Tired giants came down from the sky and pulled the water over them like blankets. They slept beneath the water, lost in a deep and ancient slumber. Very rarely did these giants move, but sometimes in a fit of dreams, they would turn over, stretch out, curl up. Knees and shoulders broke the water’s surface and became islands; large piles of the giants became great stretches of land. Here the giants slept undisturbed for stretches of time that could not be filled by a million generations of humans. It remained dark and still.
And then the first change: One giant, young and restless as giants go, opened its eye for just a moment. From this wakeful eye came consciousness and it tore across the sky, becoming fire and light, growing faster and hotter as it shook every atom. It glowed in the sky like a cloud of furnaces, and instead of fumes, new matter rose from the heat. It moved up and out, full of future and prophesies, past and reflections. The Atomic Fabric then began to spiral out across the world, self-generating and self-destructive. This massive force of energy was the Fuhrl and it grew out of the land and water. The giant, unaware of its own creation, turned over, and fell back asleep.
The Fuhrl continued to grow. It created the atmosphere and clouds, beauty and conflict. It disperses, and begins to separate and solidify into the essential matter of the universe. These are the things and ideas that we as humans are aware of.
ReCreation Story
Our world changes. Much faster and more violently than anyone alive has previously experienced. Whether it is by our own hands, or by the power of the earth, life’s fragility is pushed almost to its limits, but survives, barely. Our world changes, the cycle starts over, and the earth returns to an infant state.
A group of youth, friends, emerge from the protective shelter they built deep beneath the surface of Lake Temagami, which kept them safe as the surface of the planet raged in flood and fire. Their hair has all grown long—it is how they kept track of their time in isolation. They find the entrance is underwater now, and they must tear through its membrane and swim to the surface and the shore. They lie on their backs naked, panting collectively, on the muddy beach, tired from their efforts to enter this changed world. They open their eyes and the light of the new day flickers and pulses deep yellows, magentas, colors of citrus and warmth. They locate the source of the light. Beneath a clear sky, some substance, not gas or water or solid, swells and vibrates and implodes upon itself—it throbs with life. As the youth look longer they begin to recognize elements from the world they knew, breaking down and transforming within this saturated mass. The earth has collected an entire reality and is in the process of recycling it. The mass is gradually becoming the fabric of a new reality. The youth call this fabric The Fuhrl, and to some degree their willpower influences it as it becomes more defined. The Fuhrl is at once a destructive and creative force. It is change.
The earth behaves as though a burden has been lifted from its back. They see areas in the lake where the water breaks away from the larger mass, rising in reflective, contorting bubbles into the air, then returns to the larger body. The first time the friends venture to walk across the new landscape, they notice that sometimes their feet leave the ground for longer and their body feels more a part of the air than the earth. Evidently there are some areas on the planet now where gravity is weaker.
As the friends walk, the world around them gains definition. Elements in the landscape drip out of the Fuhrl and solidify before their eyes. Trees are taller and more resilient, most over one hundred feet. At first, their bark is a gamut of neutral tones, slightly reflecting the warm hues given off by The Fuhrl. Most of the first objects that begin to set the stage of this new reality are a variety of off-whites, and the landscape appears as a blank canvas. Herds of beasts stampede out of a leg of The Fuhrl, similar to the bison and woolly mammoths that the youth remember from pictures. The fur of these beasts is wilder and thicker, though, and whiter than the bark of the trees. One person begins to collect clumps of the fur as the beasts shed and regenerate, and fashions from it the softest fabric he has felt. He wraps himself in it and his heartthrobs with the comfort it provides him. He teaches his comrades to felt blankets as well, because he loves them and wants them to know this comfort too.
Throughout the first day, The Fuhrl travels closer to the horizon. It must pollinate the whole world, so while it touches other parts of the planet, the friends experience something like night. The air remains warm. The stars brighten, and there are more of them visible than before—as if a veil no longer obscures half of the contents of the abyss. The quantity and variety of stars brings the youth such joy that they remove their blankets and begin to dance, out of gratitude for a fresh start and as an outlet for the physical energy the change has brought them. They sing, they clap and stomp their feet remembering how to use their voices again to express love to each other and share a common appreciation for what surrounds them. The earth responds to their music and harmonizes with them. The sounds of the grasses and lichens and mosses simultaneously sprouting from the fertile soil, the water’s surface flirting with the mud at the shore, and the guttural groans of the massive trees resemble percussion richer and more rhythmic than was possible before the destruction of what was. In the distance the stampede apparently reaches some newly formed stone and runs across it. The vibrations that reach the ears of the dancers are distorted by the pockets of unique gravity and punctuate their music with an intense, throbbing bass that possesses their bodies in a dance that they can no longer control with thought.
The Fuhrl edges in over the horizon, shedding some light on the scene. One of the humans opens her eyes and is surprised; she sees that their music and dancing is exuding color—painting the landscape as tendrils of a broader spectrum of hues than they have ever been able to see grow out from their sounds and motions and pass over, wind around, dissolve into the grasses, trees, earth, and water. The woman realizes that she and her friends are responsible for bringing color back to the planet.
